The present invention relates to the processing of the digital signals coming from optical sensors and, especially, from linear optical sensors also known as lines or linear arrays of photo-detectors.
The invention relates to devices used to carry out this processing operation and to video transformers constituted by one of these devices or by the association of several of these devices.
A known way of analyzing an image is to use one or more lines of photo-detectors. The length of a line of photo-detectors used, in a camera, as an image sensor depends on the application, desired resolution and format of the image. This line may be constituted either by a monolithic strip when there exists such a strip corresponding to the optical analysis to be performed or by an assembly of several strips. It is thus, for example, that there exist commercially available monolithic strips formed by 2048 and 6000 photo-detectors and strips formed by the joining of three monolithic strips of 2048 photo-detectors each. When the commercially available strips do not correspond to the needs of the assemblies to be made, they are joined end to end optically, with an overlapping of the photo-detectors at the abutting ends. Commercially available strips formed by several monolithic strips are generally mounted back to front with respect to each other on a same mechanical support, but without any optical overlapping.
Different lines of photo-detectors are thus made, and there are known ways of designing a video transformer specific to each line structure, to process the signals given by the line considered; the processing makes it possible to obtain a video signal representing the real position of the photo-detectors in the focal plane of the camera, in a format that is programmable linewise and at a frequency that may be different from the frequency of analysis.